we drive until these slapdash spires are busied away in the rear view mirror,
and my hand finds yours easy on the gearstick. the sky
arches in a feline crest above the windscreen. anecdotes buried loose
in the backs of our minds rear into staggering mirth, and suddenly
it’s all relived, the joy of past outings, the ineffable sanctity of half-forgotten
comedies – and reworded, too, anxious misgivings about this moment or that
carelessly rethrown into throwaway hilarities – that morning you found
an old doll of your brother’s, that time you almost followed a tangerine into traffic.
we are going out for a picnic, and nothing else matters today.
the indefinable evasion of these country lanes, and the feeling
tentative in my chest, push us both into somewhere over-sized, unexplored, a
map with secret lifelines only visible when lost. we find ourselves
spinning round unknown bends, between hedges sprawling
with blaze and berries – you swing
the car through an unspeakable turn
and conversation stills, silent, in our throats.
there is a field spread out beyond the gate we are facing.
it stretches, seamless, sunbathing beneath cloudless glass : and it flurries,
alive, in a thousand poppies, in a hundred million dandelions. you
park with one tyre grazing the hedge and we stand and we stare at the wildflowers.
at first, there’s a hesitation as we look for confirmation : an invitation into heaven, nervous
glance for intervention. but the gate offers itself with an unlatched suggestion,
and within moments it morphs and is no longer a decision –
– you step and i follow, and we
enter – faster, shins buried in wilderness, in seeds and
renewal and something poking perfection, and i’m laughing,
and you’re looking with incredulity
at your body in the light, at this simmering hotpot of fragrance and ferns. it’s soft, this sunsoaked soap sud of dandelion feathers,
glinting with flowers and you, mostly,
breathless with your hands full of mine. we allow ourselves
to become pictures, country figures, pinned in a painting awash with impressionist rashes
of honey and scarlet – we take ourselves for snapshot figures
shaking with laughter and infused fresh air – there’s something in the earth here,
i tell you, unfurled and laid open in the soft flush of poppies and soil.
there’s something here that makes me feel alive. you prop up your head on one elbow
and look at me, at the glow of petals and the breathing upsurge of spring,
at the clusters of grass in my hair. you say nothing.
on the drive home, the car reeks of countryside promise. i feel
half mad with a future fragile between my knees, squeezed crooked in
the passenger seat – i want it so badly my chest hurts. i want you, in fields,
in some open space domed beneath a sky of aching extension. i want this
all the time. i stare at the ridge of your nose against the window,
the landscape beyond succumbing with revulsion
to bricks, cement, city buses and harsh fluorescent neon. we will have this,
i decide, the world and the water. we will have it all for ourselves
one day.
“Summer Meadow” by enneafive is licensed under CC BY 2.0